These are the 1992 Endy Awards, wherein I pretend to give out maneki-neko statues to the best in that year in film. Awards for many other years can be found in the Rankings & Awards Index. Eligibility is determined by imdb date and by whether or not I’ve seen the movie in question. Nominees are listed in alphabetical order and the winners are bolded. And the Endy goes to. . .

Over the years I’ve rotated between Mohicans, Unforgiven and Hard-Boiled at the top of my 1992 list. John Woo’s film is arguably the greatest pure action film ever made, while Eastwood’s Western is a genre-encompassing, apocalyptic masterpiece. But Mohicans is simply one of the most beautiful films ever made, not just in that it is remarkably picturesque (though it is) but in the expansiveness of its portrait of America, an elegy for a nation that might have been. 20 year old me would have insisted that Glengarry Glen Ross and Reservoir Dogs be added to those three at the top, but 40 year old me knows that Fire Walk with Me, Orlando and even Porco Rosso are significantly more profound works of cinema.

Keitel becomes the second actor to be nominated twice in the same category in the same year, and like Maggie Cheung in 1996, he fails to come away with the Endy. This is Denzel’s year. Washington won as well in 2004 for Man on Fire. Other lead actors who, like Keitel, were excellent in two lead performances in 1992: Chow Yun-fat (Hard-Boiled and Full Contact), Jet Li (Swordsman II and Once Upon a Time in China II), Stephen Chow (The Royal Tramp I and II) and Tim Robbins (The Player and Bob Roberts). Also receiving votes: Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven and Robert Downey Jr in Chaplin.

This was Swinton’s fourth nomination and second win, until I recently watchedFire Walk with Me again for the first time since I was a teenager and realized how truly amazing it is and how phenomenal Sheryl Lee’s performance is.

The Academy went with the pioneering digital effects of Death Becomes Her, I’m going with the the epitome of Hong Kong and Tsui Hark’s pre-Handover effects-driven wuxia, where demented imagination trumps uncanny verisimilitude.